Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American to be nominated and confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Yet that impressive and important fact can obscure how important Marshall's arguments and ideas were to the modern understanding of the Constitution. Before he joined the court, Marshall had already been one of the legal architects at the NAACP in overturning segregation, arguing before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education and many other cases. As a Supreme Court Justice, Marshall delivered opinions that showed an understanding of the Constitution as a "living document," and he saw his role as a judge to be promoting justice.